NOW that the evacuees of southern Lebanon and northern Israel are streaming back to what remains of their homes, and Israel has negotiated a face saving retreat from its latest Lebanese fiasco, the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, can turn his attention back to the most pressing order of domestic business: winning the general election only a month away, on May 29th.
Superficially, the portents are good. Most opinion polls have him 4 or 5 per cent ahead of his only rival for the prime ministership, the Likud party leader, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.
Public confidence in the accords with the Palestinians, rocked in February and March by Islamic extremist bombings, has been at least partially restored by the PLO's symbolic cancellation last week of the clauses in its covenant that called for the elimination of the state of Israel. And criticisms of the high number of Lebanese civilians killed, and the relatively unimpressive truce terms that ended the recent assault, have been mitigated by the knowledge that not a single Israeli soldier or civilian lost his or her life.
What's more, Mr Peres can bet that lingering revulsion at the assassination of his predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin, six months ago, by a right wing extremist, will probably yield him a goodly number of votes.
And he is doubtless aware that many voters identified solidly with Mr Netanyahu's right wing camp are disquieted by elements of the Likud leader's personality - including his alarming readiness to tailor his political tune to fit the mood of the day, and his susceptibility to some of the most hawkish members of the right.
Despite these encouraging factors, it is unlikely that Mr Peres is getting over confident. After all he did fail on four previous occasions in the 1970s and 1980s to win the premiership outright. But just in case he is savouring any premature sense of victory, he might be advised to look long and hard at the other side of the electoral picture.
Principally, he might care to look back to 1992, when Mr Rabin scraped into power with the narrowest possible of Knesset majorities - 61 votes to 59 in the 120 seat Knesset. Helping Mr Rabin to victory were several factors that will be absent this time: a centrist backlash against the Likud government's exuberant spending on West Bank Jewish settlement; a massive Labour vote among the Russian immigrant community the wastage of tens of thousands of right wing votes on tiny political parties that failed to clear the threshold for Knesset representation; and a strong personal vote for the much admired Mr Rabin.
The rules of the election game have changed since then: next month, for the first time, Israelis will fill in two ballot papers, voting once for a prime minister and once for the party of their choice. But that reform won't much affect the basic arithmetic.
Mr Peres could also be damaged if large numbers of Arab voters remain sufficiently outraged by the Lebanon bombardment to withhold their support from him on May 29th. And if, as seems likely, he goes ahead with the army's withdrawal from Hebron before election day, he can kiss goodbye to any support from religious Israelis for whom the Biblical West Bank town, burial place of the patriarchs, holds particular significance.
Worst of all, experience suggests, would be any reappearance by the suicide bombers. And the Islamic extremists are certainly trying: there have been several close calls in recent days, including one attempt last week that ended with the would be bomber killing himself just outside Jerusalem, the apparent victim of a technical malfunction.
Mr Peres's lead in the polls does not look quite so healthy after all